As I watched, our four-year-old granddaughter assembled puzzles again and again. When she became bored long after I would have, she enticed me into a game of Concentration. Based on the old television game show of the same name, the idea is to match pairs of identical cards spread at random, face side down, on the floor. A second puzzle to solve isn’t hidden behind the group of cards as with the TV show; instead, the player who makes the most matches wins. She won every time. I could remember the vicinity of a match, but would often turn up the card beside the right one. She never missed. Just as she had worked puzzles again and again, we played this game many times.
Shortly after we put away these games and I joined the adult conversation, she brought her new paper dolls to me to play. I watched as she dressed them in one outfit, then another, but we never really played pretend. However, I marveled at this modern version of an old, old game.
If you haven’t seen the latest paper dolls, stop at a toy counter and look. The cardboard dolls, now housed in their own metal container, are far sturdier than the ones I ever used to punch out of the thin cover of a book of paper dolls. Apparel no longer has to be cut out piece by piece. Gone also are those infuriating tabs to keep the dresses on the doll. Instead the garbs now cling to the dolls as if by magic (or magnets.)
Again as I watched, the child changed clothes on the doll as if it were a model changing designer gowns between each walk down the runway. Each ensemble came with blouses, skirts, slacks, jackets, hats, bags, and shoes to mix and match. With the same sense of order that she used to work puzzles and play games, she adeptly changed the doll’s look.
Amidst this new play, old memories, long forgotten, burst through like an unexpected summer shower. Long after I had put aside baby dolls, I, too, continued to play paper dolls for hours. As I grew older, my friends and I would spend even longer hours designing new gowns on paper for our models to wear. Long before the birth of Barbie and her splendid wardrobe, we would trace the paper dolls’ shapely figures, fashion clothes to fit (complete with tabs), color, cut and display.
Our daughter, as a child, did the same. She, too, had a large set of paper dolls. Long after the fun of dressing the dolls in store-bought clothes, she and her friends, also, designed clothes for their paper models. Although children of this generation had Barbies, the creativity of fashioning a new wardrobe for the paper dolls still held a big attraction.
Around the age of 12, our daughter, aunt to the grandchild who prompted these memories, brought me her large collection of paper dolls, which she had kept in a box long after she had stopped playing with them. At the time, she was cleaning her room of all childish things and she asked if I knew of anyone who would enjoy them as much as she once had. I took them off her hands.
We never gave used paper dolls to another little girl, but I wrote a column about that moment with my daughter and her discarded collection. Shortly thereafter, I met a reader who told me that after she read that column, she had the strangest urge to run in, awaken her daughter from a sound sleep and tell her that she had to play paper dolls right then. Of course, she didn’t, but she realized that her own daughter would all too soon make the transition from child to teen.
After seeing our youngest granddaughter’s latest version of an old plaything, I thought about our oldest granddaughter, now a teen fascinated with fashion and the idea of being a fashion designer. These new, sturdy dolls could be perfect models for those many designs floating around in her head.
I wonder if she still has a set of paper dolls tucked away in her own closet like her mother once did. Even when a girl outgrows the play, the memories of the good times linger for a long, long time.
2005
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